by Tess Stimson
I don’t have a single relationship that hasn’t been blighted by losing Lottie. Everyone who was at the wedding has the stain of suspicion on them, especially the so-called ‘twelve apostles’: the dozen guests who were at Lottie’s ‘last supper’ the night before the wedding. Even those who weren’t there aren’t safe; online trolls have accused Harriet of snatching my child because she couldn’t have her own.
The closeness I once shared with my parents has become claustrophobic. They worry about keeping me safe, when the sky has already fallen. And I’ve lost so many friends because they don’t know what to say to me, how to be mothers around a woman who’s lost her child. It’s not sex that’s the last taboo in society: it’s bereavement.
‘It’s been a year, Alex,’ Marc pleads. ‘I’ve stayed away from you, like you asked. I don’t know what more I can do to show you I’m sorry.’
‘I know you are,’ I say. ‘But it’s too late.’
‘Please, Alex. Whatever mistakes I’ve made, it’s only because I love—’
‘Don’t.’
‘Lottie’s gone,’ he says, standing up. ‘It breaks my heart, but she’s gone, Alex. You still have the rest of your life. She wouldn’t want you to waste it. She’d want you to be happy again.’
‘You should leave,’ I say, opening the door.
‘After all I’ve done for you,’ Marc says.
An odd chill ripples down my spine. There’s a shadow in Marc’s eyes, a darkness. After all I’ve done for you.
What does he mean?
My phone buzzes and Jack’s number comes up on my screen.
Suddenly, my throat is dry. Jack said he’d call me the moment he had news about Ian Dutton. ‘I have to answer this, Marc,’ I say. ‘You need to go now. Please, don’t come back.’
I shut the front door behind him and take a steadying breath. In the next few seconds, I will know if—
‘We haven’t found her,’ Jack says, ripping off the plaster. ‘But there’s something you need to see.’
chapter 42
alex
‘Ian Dutton was set up,’ Jack says.
We’re sitting in his constituency office, less than two hours after he called me. Whatever plans he may have had for his evening, he cancelled so he could meet me straight away. He understands that even though my daughter’s been missing for more than two years, every night of not knowing is as brutal and tormented as the first.
‘What do you mean, Ian was set up?’ I ask.
Jack hands me his phone. I stare at the photo of an attractive brunette in her late twenties. She looks Middle Eastern: Syrian, maybe, or Lebanese.
‘Her name is Sanaa,’ Jack says. ‘She’s Ian Dutton’s girlfriend. She’s the woman who was with him in the video. And that,’ he adds, taking the phone and swiping to another picture, before handing it back to me, ‘is the girl Ian was carrying in his arms. Sanaa’s six-year-old daughter, Hala.’
I study the screen. The little girl’s long hair is bright blonde, just like Lottie’s. She’s about the same age as my daughter would be, too, but the resemblance stops there. I pinch the screen and zoom in on her face. Close up, it’s obvious she’s a different child – wrong eye colour, wrong nose – but, of course, in the video all that was visible was the back of her head.
‘Why didn’t he come forward and explain who the girl was?’ I say, handing back the phone. ‘His name and photograph were all over the news! He could’ve ruled himself out as a suspect with a single phone call!’
‘Because he and Sanaa were eloping,’ Jack says.
‘So?’
‘Sanaa is Lebanese and so is her husband. Issues of child custody and divorce in Lebanon are generally decided in religious courts. If a father establishes that the mother is unfit or lacking good moral character, she loses any right to the child.’ He gets up from the leather sofa and pours us both a measure of single malt from the bottle on the bookshelf. ‘Running off with another man, especially a Westerner like Ian, pretty much makes a prima facie case on that score.’
‘So he put himself at the centre of a kidnap investigation instead?’
‘It wasn’t just that Sanaa wouldn’t get a fair hearing in court,’ Jack says. ‘The man’s last wife died in mysterious circumstances. Sanaa was terrified of him. She knew if she left him, she’d have to disappear completely, and so would Ian.’
It certainly explains why Ian has been hiding out in Dubai under a false name, willing to sacrifice his reputation and go on the run to protect the woman he loves.
But he also sacrificed whatever hope I had of finding my daughter.
After the police identified him as their prime suspect, they all but gave up the search for anyone else.
‘How reliable is this information?’ I ask.
‘Oh, it’s reliable.’ Jack knocks back his drink. ‘My guys don’t mess around. Ian didn’t give it up straight away, but, like I said, they can be very persuasive.’
I don’t feel sorry for Ian Dutton. His silence has wasted our time for almost two years. I feel ill when I think of the money and manpower that’s been directed towards tracking down the wrong man. Every fact we’ve used to inform our search since the footage first surfaced has been predicated on a red herring. If Ian couldn’t call the police, he could have phoned me, or sent a message. Told someone.
‘Wait. If it was Sanaa’s daughter Ian was carrying, why would anyone film it?’ I ask. ‘Why would they think it was Lottie?’
‘They didn’t. Alex, this wasn’t a well-meaning tip-off. That video derailed the entire investigation. The whole thing with the Serbian burner phone, calling the Italian police – someone went to a lot of trouble to set Ian up and get the police chasing their tails. They wanted to waste time and resources, and they succeeded.’
I’m filled with sudden rage at the sadistic cruelty of it.
‘Whoever took it, they were hiding in a doorway down the street, phone in hand, waiting to film Ian’s midnight flit,’ I say savagely. ‘You can tell by the way the video starts before either of them even come out the door. The bastard must’ve known about it in advance.’
‘Yep.’
‘That has to be a pretty short list of people, Jack.’
‘Ian says he didn’t even tell his family. Still hasn’t, in fact. They’ve got no idea he’s in Dubai. Sanaa didn’t tell anyone either – her parents would’ve supported her husband over their daughter. Ian insists the only people who knew were the two of them.’
‘Someone knew!’
Jack rubs his thumb thoughtfully across his lip. ‘Whoever sent that video was close enough to Ian to know what he was planning. That gives us some parameters.’
‘Who could’ve known he was going to disappear in the middle of the night, if even his family didn’t?’ I say, frustration sharpening my tone.
‘It might not seem like we’re any further on, Alex, but trust me, we’re making progress,’ Jack says. ‘When you identified Ian from the video, the police just concentrated on finding him, for obvious reasons. They weren’t looking at the circle of people around him, which means there are leads that probably haven’t been followed up.’
I want to believe he’s right. Having a new focus of investigation is a major step forward. We’ve been treading water for so long, and this could be the break we need.
Or yet another dead end.
‘We should find out if Ian has a connection to anyone at South Weald House,’ I say. ‘Maybe he knew someone who worked there.’
‘It’s certainly something to consider,’ he says.
I know a brush-off when I hear one.
‘You don’t sound convinced,’ I say.
Jack pulls sideways at his tie to loosen it. I’m struck again by the repressed energy he exudes. It’s impossible not to be caught in its undertow and, despite my wrenching misery, knowing Jack believes we’re getting somewhere makes me feel a little better.
‘Look, we’ve established Lottie must’ve known her abductor, right?�
� he says. ‘Or at least felt comfortable with them, or she’d have cried out when they approached her. Created some kind of disturbance, whatever. That’s one of the reasons the police liked Ian for this in the first place.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now we know that whoever took her knew Ian pretty well, too,’ he adds, balling up his tie and flinging it into a desk drawer. ‘Well enough to have discovered his plans to vanish with Sanaa and be there on the right day, at the right time, to film it. So we’re looking for someone who met Lottie and knew Ian.’
‘The twelve apostles,’ I say.
He pulls a pad of paper towards him. ‘Yes. It’s got to be someone who was at the rehearsal dinner. It’s the only chance they’d have had to meet both Ian and Lottie. Ian was only in Florida one night and he told my guys he didn’t speak to anyone else at the wedding. Give me the names of everyone who was at that “last supper” other than you and Ian.’
‘Paul Harding,’ I say. ‘Zealy. Marc and Sian themselves, of course, and Sian’s parents, Penny and David. Marc’s dad, Eric. Catherine Lord, the maid of honour – she married Paul a few months after the wedding, so she’s Catherine Harding now. And Flic and Johnny Everett, the parents of one of the bridesmaids, Olivia.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘But the police have checked them all out, multiple times—’
‘The police spent the first half of the investigation thinking it was you and the second insisting it was Ian,’ Jack says. ‘I’m not taking anything they say on trust.’
I notice he’s divided the ten names into two separate columns.
‘Men and women,’ Jack says. ‘You saw a woman on the train with Lottie. So that’s where we start.’
two years and fourteen days missing
chapter 43
alex
I’m woken by a noise downstairs. I sit up in bed, my heart pounding. The red numerals of the clock on my dresser read 4:33 a.m.
There’s another soft thud and the unmistakable sound of someone moving about in the kitchen below me.
I flip back the covers and slide quietly out of bed. I’m not so much scared as furious: sleep is my most bitter enemy and only comes to me after hours of tossing and turning every night. I already know I’ll never find the blessed relief of oblivion again tonight.
Another thump and then an odd, dull scrape of metal on metal.
I’ve been burgled three times since Lottie was taken; my unremarkable terraced house in Balham has graced newspapers often enough to make me a target for both cranks and thieves who seem to think I have bank notes from the Lottie Foundation stashed beneath my mattress. After the first robbery, I had a state-of-the-art security system installed, but technology is only as good as its human operator. I’ve got careless about setting it when I go to bed at night, especially as it has a tendency to go off if so much as a feather drifts across one of its sensors.
Grabbing my phone from my bedside table, I punch in three 9s and keep my finger over the green call button as I edge downstairs. A streetlamp outside my front door casts a rectangle of light through the stained-glass fanlight, splashing turquoise and purple abstract art across the black and white hall tiles.
The sound of footsteps in the kitchen brings me up short. I don’t have a weapon and even if I did, I’ve no idea how to use it. When I was at college, I did a six-week course in self-defence, but the last time I actually went head-to-head with anyone my opponent was my seven-year-old sister.
Fuck it.
With a yell, I fling open the kitchen door so hard it bounces off the wall and slams back against me. A shadow bolts past me into the hall.
A small, four-legged shadow.
The fox stops as it reaches the front door, cornered. I take a step towards it and it bares its teeth with a ferocious growl.
I stop, holding up the palms of my hands as if in a hostage negotiation. ‘Hey, take it easy,’ I say. ‘You scared me as much as I scared you.’
The fox growls again. I can’t get to the front door to let him out, so I go back into the kitchen and unlock the back door. The fox zips past me and into the darkness, and I shut the door behind him.
The sash window over the sink is raised; that must be how he got in. I don’t remember opening it, but my memory isn’t exactly reliable these days.
I close the window. The fox has knocked over a packet of coffee beans I’d left out on the counter and worried at some porridge oats in their cardboard cereal box, ripping the packet open.
I tidy up the mess and am just sweeping it into the bin when my heart starts banging in my chest so loudly I can hear the blood passing through my ears. My hands tremble on the dustpan and brush, and my vision is suddenly blurry. A wave of prickly heat sweeps through my body. I strip off the T-shirt I wear to bed and splash cold water on my face. My heart pounds even faster, even harder. I take a deep breath to calm myself, but my breaths are sharp and shallow. My chest tightens until it feels like I’m choking and my vision gets darker and narrower and then becomes kaleidoscopic, like when you close your eyes and press down on your eyelids to see stars. I have to grip the counter with tingling hands just to stay upright.
I yank open the drawer nearest to me, scrabbling through pizza delivery brochures and appliance instructions and spare coffee filters for the vial of Valium I keep there. I manage to coordinate my shaking fingers long enough to prise off the child-proof lid and swallow two of them dry.
It takes twenty minutes for the medication to kick in. I sink to the floor and curl up on the cool tiles, and tell myself I can get through this. This is not too much for me. I have been through this before and it’s not too much for me.
Eventually, the panic attack abates. My anxiety starts to wind down, sweat cooling on my skin as my breathing slowly returns to normal.
I push myself into a sitting position and lean back against the nearest kitchen cupboard. I feel utterly exhausted, as if I’ve run a marathon. And in terms of my body’s panicked response, I have.
I get to my feet and finish sweeping up the rest of the spilled coffee and porridge oats, moving like an old woman. We’ve had urban foxes around here before, although this is the first time one’s been bold enough to come into the house. But it’s my own fault for leaving my windows open.
I lean over the sink, double-checking I’ve fastened the catch at the top of the casement. And then I see the lock is broken. There are clear grooves in the frame around it. Someone has jemmied the catch open, and very recently. The exposed wood is pale and new. Someone was here, in my house, while I slept.
chapter 44
alex
My expensive laptop is exactly where it should be, on my desk in my study.
So, too, are the small diamond studs I stupidly left on the windowsill the other day, because I’d spent so long on the phone talking to a client they were irritating my earlobes. My office window is securely locked. My old case files are stacked neatly on the bookshelf beneath it, their corners perfectly lined up, undisturbed.
But the stand containing my pens is on the left of my keyboard, not the right. I always line up my mouse with the edge of its mouse mat; that, too, is in the wrong place.
No self-respecting thief leaves behind diamonds and electronics. Whoever broke into my house was clearly looking for something else.
Information?
I’ve caught journalists going through my bins and intercepting my post more than once, though none of them have yet broken into my home. But this could also be connected to one of the legal cases I’m working on, which worries me more. I represent several women who have a great deal to fear. One sought asylum here in the UK after her wealthy Pakistani husband and son murdered her daughter in an honour killing for refusing to marry the man picked out for her. Another Yemeni girl lives in constant fear for her life because she’s gay. Both are sequestered in safe houses here in London. I’m their lawyer of record: someone may have come here, looking for their addresses.
&
nbsp; But all the case files I’m currently working on are still in place on my desk and show no sign of being disturbed.
When I check my laptop, I find its sophisticated security system – installed by my law firm – hasn’t been breached either. Perhaps whoever searched my office didn’t have time to find what they were looking for before the fox roused me out of bed.
Knowing someone was in my home, going through my things, should freak me out more than it does. Now would be the logical time for a panic attack, but I’m immune to the normal sense of violation most people feel after a burglary: for more than two years now, I’ve been public property. There isn’t a corner of my life that hasn’t been exposed and laid bare to judgement.
I have no privacy left to invade.
The absence of fear leaves room for straightforward curiosity. Who broke in and what were they hoping to find?
There’s no point calling the police. A break-in during which nothing was taken probably doesn’t even warrant a case number, never mind an investigation. Nor do I want the publicity that would attend the inevitable leak to the press. I’ll figure this one out myself. I have a hunch that if I discover what was taken, it’ll lead me to the who.
I sit down at my desk and carefully go through each of my files and folders. I find nothing missing, not a page out of place, in any of them.
Except one.
I probably wouldn’t even have noticed the discrepancy had I not been on high alert, looking out for it. But as soon as I open the folder I spot the paperclips collating my notes are on the left-hand corner of the collected pages, where most people would put it, rather than the right, as is my habit.
This break-in was never about work or getting a story. It’s about Lottie. It’s always about Lottie.
Quickly, I flip through the pages of notes to the back of the folder where I tucked the photograph of my sister and me eating ice-creams on the lawn with the housekeeper from South Weald House.
